Bad Moon Rising
by goth-huntress
Summary: Before Supernatural, before Buffy season 7, John and Dean Winchester help a Priest with car trouble on a back road in Alabama. Brother Caleb has been sent by the First Evil to make the Winchester's lives miserable.
1. Chapter 1

Bad Moon Rising

Supernatural/BTVS Crossover

Word Count: 614

John Winchester saw the old truck on the side of the road in the middle of the William B. Bankhead National Forest in Alabama outside of Double Springs. It was rusted out in spots, the paint worn down to the red primer, and its hood was up while white steam billowed out of it. The Impala pulled up behind the truck, its black paint a pristine shiny black that reflected the starlight peeking through the canopy of the trees. The chrome so bright that it looked like liquid silver. "That is one crappy looking truck," Dean said from the passenger seat stating the obvious. His blue eyes scanned the dark shadows around the truck looking for some sign of the driver. The man was dressed in black, and hard to see. Dean relaxed when he saw the white of his collar against the darkness.

The man in the collar glanced up from the truck's engine, behind him the spectre of his mistress waited while the car came to a stop. "These the ones you wanted me to meet?" he said quietly beneath his breath as the dome lights in the car came on with the opening of the heavy Detroit steel doors of the old car. The First nodded with a sly smile. She was wearing the face of a young black whore that he'd killed for her about a hundred and fifty miles north.

"Need some help?" the older man asked as he stepped from the car, the gravel on the side of the road crunching beneath his boot heels. "This is no place to be stuck this late at night."

"This ain't no place to be stuck any time of day," Caleb wiped his grease covered hands on an old rag that was stained from wiping his knife on a regular basis, and then tucked it back into his pocket before the man and his son could see the brown stains of old blood that were a permanent fixture and reminder of his service to the First. "Mighty nice of y'all to stop to help me though. I'm Caleb."

"Father Caleb?" Dean said as he came around behind the man, unknowingly walking through the First, and shivered as her evil brushed at his soul.

"That's right," the fallen priest said with a grin. "On my way to Double Springs to see a cousin of mine. 'Fraid my old truck has other ideas though. Looks like I blew a radiator hose." He frowned knowing damned well that that's what had happened. He'd wanted to just cut the hose, but She had told him they were too smart for that. It was better to weaken it, so that when it broke it would be real. "Don't suppose y'all have a spare in that mighty fine lookin' car of yours?"

"Don't think so," John said gruffly as always. His voice sounding like he'd drunk too many bottles of moonshine on his quest for revenge against the demon that had killed his wife and the mother of his sons.

"But we can give you a ride into town if you like?" the boy offered. Caleb figured he was about twenty, but his eyes were so much older than that. His father shot him a warning glance, but by then it was too late.

"I would appreciate it," Caleb reached into the cab of the truck, and grabbed his duffel bag. "Not much hope of me hitchin' a ride with anyone else tonight." The boy and his father had been to hell and back. Making their lives miserable was going to be so much fun, and quite a challenge. He couldn't wait. "Think there's a storm comin'."


	2. Chapter 2

Caleb settled into the front seat of the car, riding shotgun as they said, while the boy, Dean Winchester, sat behind him. The ex-priest glanced into the rear view mirror a few times as they bounced up onto the main road again, just in time to see Dean's eyes lock with his. The boy's lips were pursed and pouting, probably because he'd given his customary seat to the hitchhiker, but it wasn't as if they could expect a man of the cloth to sit in the backseat.

It was also so much easier for Dean to keep his gun trained at the man's back in case there was any trouble. Last thing he wanted to do was to shoot through the Impala's upholstery, but sometimes you really didn't have a choice. "So your cousin's place far from here?" Dean asked friendly like since it was obvious that his father wasn't going be making any kind of effort to speak to the man. Dean really wasn't sure what he was likely to hear, but he kind of liked having someone in the car to talk to. John was never much of a talker unless they were planning a hunt.

"Not too far," Caleb said with a smile twisting to glance towards Dean as he leaned his back against the car door. "He and his family have a nice little house in town."

Dean nodded. He fished around trying to find a way to see how much the priest knew about the area. He and John had come there to hunt down something that was making perfectly normal, supposedly normal, people kill each other. "Are they doing all right then?" he asked.

"Far as I know," Caleb shrugged. "I spoke with 'em a couple days back when I told 'em I was comin'. Did somethin' happen that I don't know about? Tornado or somethin?"

"No, no," the boy scrambled a bit, but Caleb could see that he was quick on the draw when need be. It was going to be so much fun to push their buttons. "We just heard that there was some trouble in Double Springs from a truck driver at the rest stop."

"Really?" Caleb's blue eyes grew haunted, sorrow and concern making his voice deepen. "Then it's a good thing I'm here to help my cousin. He's a deputy." It was so nice to be able to tell the truth while weaving the tale that would protect him from them. He really did have kin in Double Springs, and cousin Lucas was a deputy there. He knew that the First had been stirring up trouble there to draw the Winchesters there, and he really couldn't wait to find out what she had been up to. Sometimes she was such a closed mouthed bitch, and didn't feel the need to share with her chosen warrior.

"A Deputy?" John let out a chuckle that was almost a growl. "Then I suppose Dean and I should do our best to stay out of trouble."

Caleb grinned brightly. "Now don't be silly. What sort of trouble could y'all get into? Besides, you both helped me out. Can't see my cousin givin' either of you no trouble. Ain't no reason for him to be keepin' an eye out on you is there? You two ain't travelin' serial killers or somethin.'" He had to dig his nails into his palms to keep from laughing at his own joke. If they only knew what kind of trouble they had picked up on the side of the road, they'd be laughing too. Laughing until they blew his head off, and sent his soul straight to hell that is.

"No, we're not dangerous," Dean quickly jumped in. "We're just on a road trip around the country until I can figure out where I want to go to college. My little brother's in school in California, but I'm just not into the beach and party crowd."

"Well that is good to hear," Caleb said as they hit the town limits. Double Springs, Alabama, population 25692, and he wondered how many fewer there really were since the First took an interest in the place. There was a great power there, she'd told him, a place where the darkest thoughts and wishes were buried beneath the town, and he was here to search for something special that he would need in his battle against the Slayer. "It's always nice to hear about a young man willin' to be on the path to righteousness instead of on the path to the seven deadly sins. And for you and your daddy to be so close, well more families should be like that."

The town of Double Springs was like any of a thousand small towns that John, Dean and Caleb had driven through on their travels. There were a few main streets, with the required number of bars, diners, banks and hardware stores. The buildings were short and spread out, so you could see the steeples of their churches over the tops of the few office buildings that they did have for the doctors, dentists and lawyers to work out of.

Caleb pointed down a street, and took them past an elementary school where the empty swings caught the midnight breeze and rocked slowly like invisible children were playing on them. "My cousin's house is down on the right two blocks down. I can walk from the corner if y'all want to just let me off? There's a motel or two at the north side of town where you should be able to have your choice of rooms. Double Springs ain't much of a tourist destination."

Dean opened his mouth to tell the priest that they'd take him all the way to his cousin's house, but before he could John pulled the Impala over to the corner. "Thanks for filling us in on the local color," John said waiting for the man to get out of the car, and for Dean to climb back up front.

"Well don't be strangers none," Caleb said as he looped the duffel bag over his shoulder. "I should at least buy y'all breakfast. Mimi's Diner over on 2nd has some mean potato pancakes. Stop on by tomorrow, and I'll buy you guys some. Thank you kindly." He whistled a hymn as he sauntered down the street towards Lucas' house. Behind him, he heard the boy and his father say a few brief words before the car headed towards the north end of town. Caleb watched from the shadows as the taillights faded from view and the deep throated purr of the engine blended into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

Lucas Black's front yard was filled with plastic children's toys, fallen leaves and the sounds of frogs and crickets. As Caleb stepped through the gate that squeaked as he pushed it open, the animals fell silent as death. He took in the sights of the house, the bright paint that was probably blue as the summer sky, and the toys that radiated the love the man felt for his children. The porch light was on; a single yellow globe to chase the bugs away while a bug zapping lantern was hung at the far end. The boards of the steps were new still smelling a bit of damp paint as he walked up to the screen door to knock. It was dark inside the house, and he had to knock more than once before he heard a voice inside the house.

"Who is it?" the voice of a young girl said from behind the door.

"It's your cousin Caleb, darlin'." He smiled picturing the soft flannel nightgown wrapped around her young innocent body while she clutched a stuffed toy in one hand. "Tell your daddy I'm here." He heard the scampering of her small feet as she charged through the house to tell her father that his kin was there.

"Cute kid," the First said from besides him. She was still clothed in the whore's skin, and leaning against the porch railing. Caleb thought about telling her to leave his family alone, but knew it'd just be a waste of time. They were as dust on the wind as far as she was concerned. Just more pawns to be used in her war.

"Thanks," Dean said as he hefted the key to their room from the pitted desk of the motel. He didn't bother to see what the name of the place was. He and his dad had stayed in so many motels over the years that they'd pretty much blurred into one place with uncomfortable beds, bad decorations and dingy bathrooms. Just once, he wished they could hunt for something in Las Vegas or someplace else with nice fancy hotels. He pocketed the key and the fake credit card he'd used to pay for the room, and walked across the parking lot to where his father was leaning against the Impala.

John didn't say a thing as they unloaded just enough clothing and weapons to be safe for the night, and then locked the car up tight. Dean popped open the door, and they were assailed with the strong antiseptic smell that belonged in a hospital more than a motel. "Yuck," Dean wrinkled his noise. "I think I can taste the Lysol. Are you going to be quiet all night dad? Or tell me what's going on?"

"There's a pit here beneath the town," John said as he dumped their luggage on the end of one of the beds covering a small fraction of the ugly bedspread while Dean locked the door behind them. "Demons come and go using it. It's like a turnpike between hell and earth. I want to find it, and try to shut it."

"Do you think he's here?" Dean asked quietly from the door to the bathroom. Seemed like he asked it every night when they settled down. Every time his father talked about demons instead of just monsters, he prayed that the demon that killed his mother and had stolen his childhood would be at the wrong end of his father's gun just this once.

As he pulled off his combat boots, John Winchester rubbed at his eyes to take the memory of Mary's body splayed on the ceiling away even if for only the seconds it took for his vision to clear. His eyes were tired and filled with grit from hours of research into the area, and the long drive to bring them here. "I don't know Dean. I just know that people are dying in this town, and we're going to find out why."

"Caleb?" Lucas' wife asked from behind the door. She pulled it open just the few inches that the chain would allow; her eye was such a pale blue that it was almost white. "We were expecting you hours ago." She relaxed at the sight of his collar in the porch light, and she removed the chain to let her husband's cousin into the house.

"I'm sorry Sara," he ducked his head in apology. "My truck broke down out in the forest, and I had to hitch a ride. Where's Lucas?"

"He's at work," Sara looked fragile, like birthing the five children that she and Lucas had had took more and more out of her with each contraction that she never could get back. "There's been another murder. That's four in the past two weeks. It's horrible." She took the priest's arm, and led him to the kitchen where she put on the pot to make his some coffee. "Are you hungry? I've got some gumbo leftover from dinner that I can heat up."

"That'd be wonderful," he said smiling brightly at her. "I'm sure it'll all be all right Sara. Mind if I go freshen up?"


	4. Chapter 4

She was standing in the eerie predawn light wearing the pretty pink dress they'd dressed her in when they'd buried her last year after the fall from her tree house had snapped her delicate neck. Her thick strawberry blonde hair was hanging in careful ringlets just like the morticians had left it before putting her little girl into the earth. Christina Mills looked deeply into her baby's blue eyes and felt fresh hot tears run down her cheeks. "Emma sweetie," she choked on a sob. She didn't worry about waking up her husband. She'd banished him from their bedroom to punish him for building the tree house so high in the tree, and he'd never tried to come back. If she listened carefully enough sometimes she could hear him snoring from the other end of the hall in their small two story house.

"Don't cry momma," Emma's vision said as the First showed the grieving fragile woman what she wanted to see most. "I've come back to you. Your prayers were answered."

"Oh baby girl," Christina almost fell out of the bed as she rushed to touch her daughter's pale cheeks. Her hands trembling with need and pain slid through the girl's apparition like it was so much smoke. "Why can't I touch you?"

"It's his fault momma," the First smiled beneath haunted eyes. "He didn't want to share you no more, so he made sure I'd fall out of the tree house. Momma, daddy wanted me dead. You need to punish him for it."

Christina walked down to the kitchen, her bare feet making small slapping noises on the old speckled linoleum as she walked over to the drawer where she kept her favorite butcher knives. She held the 10" blade up into the light, and smiled when she saw Emma's face reflected in the cold steel. "That's right momma," the First smiled even bright. She was so pleased with how easy these country bumpkins were to manipulate. "Now go show daddy how to play nice."

Frank Mills barely had time to reach up to stop the knife from plunging into his stomach a second time when he saw Emma standing behind his wife in her blood splattered nightgown. Christina's eyes were wild, blood mixing with the tears as they ran down her face. "You killed my baby!" she screamed as she dug the fingers of her free hand into the wound. As he gasped and writhed in pain, she stabbed and sliced at him again and again until he was nothing more than a pile of raw meat on the bed. The First left her there gibbering in a puddle of his blood. She had other things to do before dawn.

* * *

Dean wandered into Mimi's Diner a bit after the breakfast rush. His father was off pretending to be an FBI profiler to get information about the rash of murders that had started in the small town. The younger Winchester, while a clever liar, was a bit too young to be taken as the man's partner. The streets of the town were filled with the normal folks heading for work, and taking their kids to school and such. He smiled at a postal worker who was emptying out a mail box, and asked if it was all right to add a letter he'd written to his brother?

"Sure thing," the man said as he shut the box, and stood up slowly to stretch his back into place. "One more letter won't break my back none. You new around here? Don't remember seein' you before."

"Just in town on a road trip with my dad," he said with a shrug. "But I heard it's not a good time to be in town. Something's going on?"

"Well the mayor would hunt me down for spoilin' the tourist trade," the man let out a snort and chuckle as he took Dean's letter from him. "But there's been a few murders here abouts. Don't know what's goin' on, but perfectly normal folks is killin' each other. Might be better you and your dad kept on down the road."

The diner was like a carbon copy of any other diner that Dean had found himself in over the years. A selection of pies in various stages of decomposition in a rotating display case, next to an old style cash register that clunked each time it was open, and the same cast of characters you'd find from one end of the country to the other filling their chosen stools at the counter and the booths that lined the walls. One of the waitresses, a woman who was on the far end of 50 with earrings made of fishing lures smacked her gum as she looked at the handsome young man who had just come in.

"Hiya," he said with a grin towards the locals as they looked him over. "Can I sit anywhere?"

"You'll want to be comin' back here," he heard a familiar voice call from the far corner where Father Caleb was holding up one hand to get his attention. "Maggie, this here's my friend Dean that I told you about. Get him whatever he wants, my treat."

Dean wasn't sure how he felt about taking food from a priest, but then he and his father were rarely holding much in the way of cash. He sank down in the peeled faded pink of bench across from Caleb careful not to touch any of the wads of gum he knew were under the table with his knees. "Thanks for buying me breakfast," he said as he waited for Maggie to fill his coffee cup. "I'd love chicken fried steak if you've got it?"

"Honey, we invented it," she snapped her gum and sauntered off in a uniform that was probably older than either Dean or Caleb towards the kitchen.

The priest was dipping the ends of his white toast into the congelling yolks of his fried eggs while Dean took his first sip of the coffee. "Don't worry," Caleb cast him a crooked grin. "They actually make fine coffee here. So where's your dad this mornin'. I wanted to buy him breakfast too

* * *

Dressed in a dark suit and tie, wearing dark glasses, and clean shaven, John Winchester sauntered into the Double Springs Sheriff's Office like he owned the place. He pulled out a fake FBI badge, and flashed it too fast to be looked at closely under the nose of a female deputy at the front desk. "I'm special agent Skinner, and I'm here to see the sheriff." 


	5. Chapter 5

Bad Moon 5

Maggie brought Father Caleb a fresh pot of coffee to fill his cup. She remembered when he'd come visit in the summers to spend time with his cousin Lucas and the rest of the Black family. The boy had always been a bit quiet, but now he seemed to have turned out all right. He was talking and laughing along with the stranger boy. Going to the seminary had been good for him. It was good to see that he'd gotten over the death of his mother and his stepmother's abuse. "Here you go father," she winked at him since she was old enough to be his momma. "Did you get to see Lucas?'

"No," Caleb said as he stirred four spoons of sugar into his black coffee. "He didn't come home last night. Sara says it's really bad. I hope I can help out while I'm here." He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise when she winked at him. He remembered her when he was younger, the way she flirted with all the customers, and had an affair with the cook while her husband was at work in the mines all day. He wondered if she even remembered what he looked like before he perished in a mine accident back when he was about seventeen. The slut. He hated being nice to her.

"Well I'm sure you're an answer to their prayers now Father." She winked at Dean and sashayed off, her huge hips tight in her polyester skirt.

"The mailman told me there's been a bunch of murders." Dean said more than he asked while sipping at his own coffee to wash down the heavily peppered white gravy that had smothered his chicken fried steak.

"Seems so," Caleb set his cup down, picking up a napkin to wipe up a spot of grease on the table. "They don't know what's goin' on. Wonderin' if there might be some weird gas comin' out of the mine affectin' people, makin' 'em see dead people and such. Sara didn't have all the details, and Lucas ain't been home to talk to about it."

Dean twisted about in the booth and sprawled while glancing out into the less than crowded street. "You picked a bad time to visit."

"Didn't really pick it myself," the Priest said with a shrug. "I go where god tells me, and it was time for me to see my family. Ain't got much of it left back home to visit with anyways." Caleb thought about pressing his fingers through Dean's lie about being in Alabama to look at colleges. There were no school in Double Springs, and he knew that he and his father the Demon hunter were there to sniff around the trouble the First had been stirring up. But for now, it would be better for the boy to think he had pooled the wool over the country folk's eyes. "Speakin' of which, I should get back to the house. Lucas might have been able to come home, and if he hasn't I'm sure Sara wouldn't mind some of my help with the kids. Tell your daddy I still owe him a meal, Dean. Y'all have a nice day."

Dean watched as Father Caleb passed Maggie a twenty to cover their bill before reaching across the table to finish the rest of Caleb's uneaten meal.

John was stripping out of the suit and tie when Dean let himself back into the motel room. He dropped onto the bed nearest the bathroom, which was his customary spot since he was a kid. His father slept close to the door to protect him and Sammy, while they boys slept close to the bathroom in case they had to pee in the middle of the night. Dean wondered if when his dad got old if they'd trade spots, so he could protect the old man and let him pee in peace at night. "Father Caleb says he still owes you a meal," he rubbed at his near to bursting belly. "Town's dull as watching paint dry, but the diner was good."

"Glad you had a good time," John said evenly. Dean heard a hint of disapproval in his voice, but then there was almost always one there. He'd told Dean to go on to breakfast while he snooped around, but he still thought the boy had been wasting valuable time. "There have been ten murders in the past 3 weeks. Some were murder/suicides and others just killing. The sheriff would find the killer just mumbling about being told to kill by someone they loved who had died."

"So it's a spirit telling them to kill? I know there's a lot of inbreeding down here, but 10 people haunted by the same spirit in different houses? That's just weird." He pulled a package of Ding Dongs that he hoped weren't too stale from the pocket of his jacket and tossed them to his father for breakfast along with a package of beef jerky from the gas station down the road.

"They weren't told by the same person to do the killings." His father pulled open the Ding Dong package and bit a chunk out of one of the dark chocolate covered cakes. It wasn't very fresh, tasted a bit like a hockey puck, but it was food. "Last night a woman killed her husband, cut him into hamburger because her daughter who'd been dead for a year told her to do it."

Caleb dressed now in lay clothes from his duffel bag and a pair of hiking boots from his cousin's closet was driving across town in Sara's old Volvo. He'd sent a tow truck to bring his truck to a repair shop owned by his uncle Steve, and was now on his way to start hunting for a cave he used to play in when he was a kid. The First told him he had to find the small dark hole in the earth again where he'd found strange writing on the walls and had hidden to avoid the older boys in the family and neighborhood picking on him at his Grandfather's house.

The trees were thicker than he remembered, but they'd had plenty of years to grow since he'd been there. He tucked his hands into his pockets to make sure that his knife was where he kept it as he heard the sound of laughter coming through the bushes. He ran the pad of his thumb lightly over the honed blade, hard enough to feel the burn of the blade, but not hard enough to draw blood. He knew just how much pressure it took to draw blood with it. He'd had lots of practice.

He took a deep breath, drawing in the warm country smell of the woods as he got closer to the cave's entrance. As he stepped past a tall stone that he'd used as a landmark for years, he nearly stepped on a girl's t-shirt wadded up in the pine needles. There was a path of discarded clothing ending with the girl's bra and a boy's shorts on the ground nearest the opening. "Hmmm, looks like someone's been sleepin' in my bed," he grinned broadly as he drew out his knife. It'd been a long time since he'd gotten to kill anyone, and he knew it would just brighten his day.


	6. Chapter 6

"Excuse me?" Dean leaned against the counter at the Double Springs Eagle. It was a small local newspaper, behind the counter were three desks covered in papers with computers that looked to be only a few years out of date. From the look of the place, Dean was pretty surprised they had computers at all to do their work. He was expecting to find them plodding along on manual typewriters. A girl with dark auburn hair glanced around a pile of papers on her desk, she was wearing small black framed glasses, and a light green t-shirt with a picture of the one of the Powerpuff Girls on it. Dean wasn't sure, but he thought the green one was Buttercup or something like that. "Hi," he didn't even have to think about it as his come hither smile flashed her way. "I'm wondering if you could help me? I'm doing some research on the area, and was hoping to get a look at your morgue."

The girl got up from her desk, shoving the pen she had been holding in her mouth behind her ear beneath her thick wavy hair and walked across the office to talk to Dean. "Our morgue," she let out a small chuckle. "Is there anything in particular you're looking into?" Rachel Wilson knew that it was only a matter of time before the press outside of Double Springs found out about the murders, and she wasn't about to let some outsider steal her byline.

"Actually," Dean tilted his head as he fingered the edges of the latest copy of the Eagle on the counter. "I'm looking into the murders."

"Well, well," Rachel leaned back resting her hips one of the empty desks, careful not to knock over any of Billy's personal items like the photos of his kids and his wife, or the partially full cup of iced cold coffee that had been there since that morning when he'd headed to Helflin to see family. "What paper are you with? I'm not about to let you scoop me out of my story. You want to know about what's going on down here. Y'all are goin' to have to get the facts from me, and use my byline."

* * *

The floor of the cave was covered with trash, cigarette butts, beer cans and bottles, and condom wrappers were scattered here and there. Caleb frowned as he leaned against the entrance letting his eyes adjust to the dark. On the wall behind him where he'd once tried to read the strange letters carved into the stone as a boy, there were tags and obscenities spray painted across the arcane words. He felt his rage boil beneath the surface. These children had desecrated a holy place with their filth. He knew that it wasn't all done by the two that were inside the cave now; there was too much garbage to be just from them. His sanctuary had been violated over and over again since he'd stopped coming here and covering the opening with downed branches to keep it safe.

Further back in the cave, he could see the yellow glow of candlelight. He could hear their voices now especially the girl's saying things that no lady would ever say while her lover pleaded for more. It twisted his stomach into a knot as he pulled his knife from his pocket. With an unnatural grace he made his way through the twisting passage towards them. The former Priest paused once in the shadows taking in the scene, he could feel the power of the First tingling over his flesh.

"It's disgusting isn't it?" She asked wearing the face of his first victim. Her light blonde hair pulled back into a thick ponytail while the front of her white dress was sliced open and dripping blood. "They are fornicating in your haven. This is where I first started talking to you. Do you remember that?"

"I'd never be able to forget it," he whispered although he knew he didn't need to speak for her to understand him. The moans and grunts of the teenagers swallowed his words.

The girl was riding the boy, her long dark hair cascading down her naked back. Caleb could see the shadows of tattoos running up her arms, and knew that he was about to do the right thing, the righteous thing. As the girl drew back, his knife slashed across her throat. It was so sharp and he was so fast, that she didn't even know she was dead until a curtain of blood began to run down her torso covering her naked breasts. Beneath her the boy cried out in terror as the blood came rushing down over him, and her body fell across him. He tried to scramble out from beneath her, but he was too tangled in the rough spun army blanket they were laying on and the corpse.

"You should never have let that dirty girl have her way with you," Caleb said as he stepped into the light besides the boy bringing his booted foot down on the boy's hair to keep him from moving without tearing out a good chunk of his scalp. "You probably think I'm goin' to kill you too, but I'm not. I've got work for you to do, and a new master for you to serve."

Caleb called on the power of the First. The blue of his eyes bled away as his pupils expanded until his eyes were the solid black of his soul. He kneeled down placing the boy's head between his knees and started the ritual. First he reached into the boy's mouth and pulled on his tongue, stretching it out as far as it would go, and then cut it off with a quick flick of his knife. The boy's mouth filled with blood, and Caleb just smiled as he cut out the boy's eyes one at a time. Next came the thread made from the guts of a murderer, with it he stitched the Bringer's eyes and mouth shut. When he was done, he wiped the blood from his hands and knife, and waited while the First finished making his minion.

* * *

"I'm not trying to steal your byline," Dean held his hands up. "I'm a student majoring in forensic psychology. I just want to get the facts for a paper and I'm working on. I'm Dean by the way. Dean Jennings." He'd almost said Brokaw, but knew she'd never believe that for a last name. "And you are?"

"Rachel Wilson," she let some of the indignation about losing her territory to another reporter go. "I've been covering the murders. I've probably got all the information you need without going through the morgue. Trust me on that, I've already been through the mess that they call a morgue." She stepped closer to get a better view of the guy. She knew he wasn't from town. She'd grown up there, and other than when she'd gone to Georgia State to get her BA in Journalism, she'd never been away from home. "I'd be willing to share my notes with you if you like?"

"Not much of a choice there," Dean said as he stepped past the counter into the office proper, and walked along towards her desk. "Spend a week in dusty old papers or spend a few hours with a pretty girl…" He smiled even brighter when she a rosy blush touched her high cheekbones.


	7. Chapter 7

John looked up and arched a burly eyebrow as Lucas Black picked up his coffee cup to refill it from the fresh pot that one of the other deputies at made. The man looked enough like his cousin that there was no doubt he was related to the Priest that he and Dean had brought into town the night before. Like the Priest he seemed to be a talkative sort, which always made it easier to finagle information out of. So far Black had been more than happy to share the case files on the murders and suicides that had hit Double Springs over the past month. "Never seen nothing like it before, although Sheriff says that there was more than a bit of crazy when there was a cave in at the mine in 89. Whole lot of violence and quite a few folks killed themselves." The deputy dropped into his seat at his desk, settling his cup down next to a picture of his family. John could see those same dark blue eyes in the man's daughters that he shared with Caleb. "My daddy died in that cave in, so wasn't payin' much attention to anyone else's sufferin' but my own."

"Do they know what caused the cave in?" John asked wondering if some demon had come out of the coal mine back then, and had returned to cause more trouble for the townsfolk.

"Gas build up," Black said with a dismissive snort. "But ain't that what they always say?" He watched as his boss the Sheriff walked into his office without casting a glance towards the FBI agent. The man seemed to be distracted by something, talking to himself as he closed his office door behind him. Moments later the blinds were pulled down, something the man usually only did if he was chewing out one of the deputies in private. "That's strange." As the words left Lucas' lips the sound of a single loud gunshot rattled the blinds against the glass windows of the sheriff's office. "Oh fuck!"

John Winchester was to the Sheriff's door in three long strides. He yanked at the doorknob, but it was locked good and tight. "Do you have a key?"

"In my desk." Lucas dug into his desk, and came up with the spare key to the office. When the sheriff was on vacation, as the senior deputy, he got to use the office. "Moana, call 911." The woman, the only other person in the office, reached for her phone with fingers shaking like they weren't part of her body.

Lucas unlocked the office door, the smell of cordite, blood and the stink of shit filled their noses as he and John stepped inside. The sheriff was in his rolling desk chair, the force of the blast from his gun and the spasms of his legs while dying had pushed the chair back against the window. Blood was splattered behind what was left of his head like crimson fireworks. The gun was still clutched in his hands on his lap. John thought he saw the fingers twitching, but with what little was left of the top of the Sheriff's head he knew that it was just the body slowing down as it stopped getting instructions from the brain.

The Deputy choked on bile, gasping for air as he rushed out of the office to the nearest desk. John heard him throwing up into a wastebasket there. He came back white faced, lips thin, and sweat beading on his brow. "God dammit, why the hell did you have to do this!" he shouted at his mentor. "We would have found out what was wrong. You didn't need to kill yourself."

John had stopped listening, as he paced around the room, he'd felt something. It was the brush of something cold and evil. Then he saw her, just a flicker out of the corner of his eye. It had been Mary. Not the Mary he'd seen last pinned to the ceiling of Sammy's room while her belly bled and fire consumed her. It had been the Mary he'd married, the beautiful girl who'd stolen his heart and soul, so that no other love could ever come close.  
Double Springs wasn't big enough to have a mental hospital, just a small ward in their general hospital. He had ridden there in the passenger seat of Rachel's Jetta. He never felt safe in tiny little cars, he was too used to having over two tons of American steel between him and danger, but he never let it show. It was hard to flirt with a girl if you showed her you were a pussy about being in a little compact car. The hospital was old, built sometime in the seventies, replacing the original asbestos filled death trap that had been built on the same spot in the forties. The walls were painted a soft golden color instead of the typical jail house green or white that he was used too, and he had to admit that it made the place look a little more sunny.

* * *

The psych ward was on the top floor. They called it a ward, but it was only a small section of hallway with four rooms with doors that locked from the outside. There were no guards to keep anyone in place, just the locks on the doors. "So how many of them are here?" Dean asked as he walked besides Rachel.

"All three," she said quietly. The hospital gave her the creeps in general, and this ward was even worse. "They are the only ones who didn't kill themselves when they were done." Dean could see a haunted look in her eyes, and was going to ask her about it when the sounds of screams started coming from one of the rooms. "Oh god. I don't know if I can do this."

"What's wrong?" Dean reached over and brushed a lock of her auburn hair back behind her ear. "You're shaking like you're about to pass out. You got a problem with hospitals?"

"No, it's not that. My mother died in one of these rooms," she pointed towards room #313, where the screams were coming from. "She went crazy when I was 6 when her brother got killed in the mine accident. She tried to kill my dad and me, and then she tried to kill herself. She was supposed to be safe here until she could be moved to a real hospital, but she never made it out of here alive. She found a way to kill herself while strapped to a bed. Her heart just stopped."

* * *

Caleb could feel the change in the air as he pulled Sara's car into the driveway of his cousin's house. In the cave, he knew that the Bringer was being remade as an instrument of the First, and that soon he'd be causing no end of trouble for the folks of Double Springs. He smiled as his little girl cousins waved at him. "Cousin Caleb!" the youngest squealed, and came rushing towards him dragging a battered stuff dog behind her. "Would you push us on the swings? Please?" 

"Where's your momma sweetheart?" he asked while he tried to remember the girls' names. The youngest was Lizzy he thought, and the older girl who had let him into the house last night was Carrie.

"She's makin' dinner. Are you goin' to stay for dinner?" Lizzy chirruped as he let her pull him towards the swing set. "Momma doesn't think that daddy's goin' to be home for dinner."

"I'll be here sweetheart. Carrie?" he turned towards the older girl who was brushing the hair of one of her dolls before setting her down to join a tea party. "Do you want to swing too?" They were such pretty little things, and Caleb knew that Lizzy would grow up to be a fine young lady. Carrie though, now she was going to be trouble. As she stepped up to him again, he could feel it, the nagging brush of power of one of the chosen ones. Carrie was a potential, a Slayer waiting for the calling to fight the forces of darkness. It would be a shame to have to kill her, but he didn't really have a choice. Yes, she was his family, but his first duty was to his Lady.

"I'm glad you haven't forgotten that." The First said from one of the empty swings, she was dressed in Goth finery like a potential he had killed for her in New Orleans. That silly little girl had been pretending to be a vampire, and had no idea she was born to slay them. "You will kill her for me."

"Of course," he said beneath his breath as he pulled Lizzy back on the squeaky chains and pushed. "It will be done before I leave town."


	8. Chapter 8

They came out of the woods, their feet bare and covered with the kind of dirt that takes years to build up. The robes that covered their bodies were almost the same brown as their feet. The hoods pulled up to hide their disfigured faces. One of them tilted his head, as if hearing something that only he could hear. The light of the setting sun fell on his face, where his eyes should have been, heavy stitches sealed the sunken eye sockets. Where his mouth should have been more haphazard stitches had sealed his lips shut. They turned towards the west end of town, slipping in and out of the shadows never missing a step, never stumbling they found the cave where their new brother was waiting.

* * *

"I think it has something to do with the mine, Dad," Dean told his father after hearing the grizzly details of the sheriff's suicide. 'Maybe they dug something up? Something got pissed off, and now it's going after the family of the miners who were there?" He pulled out a list of the murders and other mysterious deaths that had plagued Double Springs since the cave in 15 years before. "A lot of the people on this had family who worked in the mines."

"In a town like this, most of them had no choice but to work in the mines Dean." John settled down in the only chair in the room and finished lacing up his well-worn combat boots. He'd left his FBI disguise in a crumpled heap on the floor. Even if Deputy Black or any of the others came by to see him, he saw no reason to keep wearing the suit. "That doesn't mean I think you're wrong. I just don't think it's that simple."

"I talked to the woman who killed her husband the night we got to town, and she said that her dead daughter told her to do it."

The hunter rubbed at his face, trying to decide if he was going to tell Dean about seeing Mary or not. "That sounds familiar," John said as he pulled open his ratty leather covered notebook. It had been to one end of the country and back more than once in Dean's lifetime. He remembered shoplifting it for their dad for Father's Day while Sam kicked up a fuss to distract the shop owners. He shifted through the pages of newspaper clippings and his own scrawling letters until he found what he was looking for. A frown creased his forehead as Dean plopped on the bed across from him waiting for him to pull the rabbit out of his hat, and solve just what was haunting the people of Double Springs.

Dean could see that there was something pissing his dad off. But being the good soldier, he just let it go. If it was something that Dean needed to know about his father would tell him. He wasn't like Sammy who couldn't stop picking at a scab until it started to bleed again. It was enough to believe in his father and know that he'd always pick the right path.

* * *

"Let me help you with the dishes," Caleb said getting up from the dinner table. He bent down, gathering up all the plates that he could reach. His cousin's eyes were haunted with the images of the blood splatters on the Sherriff's office walls. Caleb had heard all about it from the First, and was now acting the dutiful family member pitching in at a time of crisis. He smiled down at Lizzy who was holding up her plate for him. She was such a pretty little thing that it was almost a shame that he was going to have to kill her. He preferred to take them down when they were older and had been tainted by the call of the Slayer in their blood. "Thank you sweetheart."

"Thank you Caleb," Sara said with a watery smile from the kitchen as he came in still dressed in his lay clothes to set the dirty dishes next to the sink. "It's perfect timing you comin' to visit us now. I know that Lucas is glad that you're here too."

"I do my best for my kin, Sara," he said as he ran the pad of his thumb over the edge of her dirty kitchen knife. He frowned at the dullness of it, and wondered if he'd have time to sharpen them properly for her before he left town. Sooner or later they would find out that he'd left the seminary, and then things were going to get real uncomfortable around the Black house. He aimed to be back on the road long before that happened, only sticking around to burry Lizzy before he was gone.

* * *

Once again dressed in his black shirt and white collar, Caleb slipped out of his bedroom at the Black house. The rest of his family was sound asleep. He could hear his cousin's snores in a battle with the dog that was snoring soundly in the hallway. The drugs that he'd slipped into their meal had sent them all into a deep slumber. He carefully turned the knob to the girl's bedroom. The walls were covered in cartoon princesses, frilly lace curtains fluttered in the open window, and there were enough stuffed animals in Lizzy's bed that he had a hard time finding her in the darkness at first. He drew back the edges of her blankets, and then reached down to gather the sleeping child in his arms. Normally he'd have just killed her there, but he didn't want Carrie to have to see all that blood when she woke up.

She was light in his arms, and she wrapped her arms around his neck as he carried her out of the house. Once he was outside, he looked into the darkness and called on a pair of the Bringers who rushed to his side taking the sleeping child from him. His truck had been returned that day, and he had them climb into the bed with Lizzy. He couldn't afford to have her see him if she woke up and by some miracle got away.

The First sat next to him in the passenger seat as he drove towards the cave. "Well darlin' hope this proves to you that I'm still yours," he drawled not at all surprised that he felt no guilt about what he was about to do at all. "Her blood should be just what you need to show the path to whatever it is y'all want me to find down there." He glanced in her direction, his blue eyes shining in the light from his broken radio. "Y'all ever intend to tell me what it is I'm supposed to be findin'?"

"I'll tell you when you need to know," she snapped at him wearing the face of his long dead mother. She'd been his first kill, and the First wasn't even bothering to make her head set right on her broken neck. Caleb could see the bruises that covered her body from the fall down the stairs he'd caused. "Now just drive."

* * *

John waited while Dean scaled the high chain link fence that surrounded the coal mine. It was shut down for the night, but the workers would be there in a few hours before dawn. The men who worked there only saw the light of day on the weekend if they were lucky. They went into the mines before dawn and in the winter the sky was black long before they came out. Dean landed like a cat on his feet on the other side, and ghosted over to the security booth to find the controls that would open the gate without alerting the guards who were doing their patrols around the grounds. John heard the click, and pulled open the gate. It swung freely and he almost dropped one of the rifles he was carrying as the gate flew out of his reach. Dean came up just in time to catch it and shut it behind them.

"Are you ready?" John asked as they stopped before an unused entrance into the mine.

"Ready as I'll ever be," Dean said as he took a flashlight and gun from his father. "Well as ready as I ever am."


	9. Chapter 9

Caleb watched next to the bound body of his cousin's daughter while the Bringers dug through the walls of the cave. Somehow with their eyeless faces they could read the runes etched in the stone for millennia, and were even now digging in one particular area with shovels that they'd stolen from tool sheds and some with their bare hands. The girl whimpered, looking up at him with wide blue eyes that looked uncomfortably too much like his own. "Hush now darlin'," he drawled as he crouched down besides her lifting a lock of her light brown hair with the flat of his hunting knife. "Since you're family I will make sure this don't hurt you none. It'll be a fast death, and you won't have to worry 'bout that taint in your blood."

"How sweet," the First said from the edge of the pit the Bringers were digging for her glory. She was still dressed as the black whore who had taken so very long to die when he'd gutted her that he swore he could still feel the slickness of her blood on his hands and arms whenever he looked at her face. While he watched the First let the image of the wound spread on her stomach, blood seeping to soak into her tacky clothing until it was running down her fishnet stocking covered legs. "Wouldn't want to scare her now would we."

"Didn't know you needed her to be afraid," the ex-priest said in a hushed voice feeling his temper flaring. "Think it should be 'nough for you that her virgin's blood, tainted as it is by the slayer's spirit, will be used to open that portal for you."

"Oh I am pleased. I just don't want to see you go soft on me," she sauntered over to him, pretending to stroke at his arm with hooked green nails that looked more evil than any he'd ever seen on a monster.

"Ain't goin' to happen. An you know that." He left the girl lying in the dirt, and went to supervise the digging.

* * *

Dean rubbed at his face, it was cold in the depths of the coal mine, and he and his father had crossed into the dangerous tunnels that had been shut down in the cave-in. "Something not look right to you dad?" he asked as he glanced at the cavernous area that wasn't supposed to be there anymore according to the map he'd stolen from the office.

"Something looks entirely too right here," John came up besides Dean flashing his light over the map. "Did we take a wrong turn?" He doubted it. He and Dean had a keen sense of direction.

"No, you're in the right place," he looked up over Dean's shoulder to see Mary smiling at him.

"Dad?" Dean squinted as John's flashlight blinded him. "Dad? What's going on?"

"Nothing," said gruffly pulling his gaze away from of the spectre of his dead wife and mother of his children.

"Oh John," Mary went on as she stood besides Dean. "You know he shouldn't be a part of this. I miss him. Please I've been alone for so long. Kill him for me. Let me hold our son in my arms again."

John took a step back, nearly tripping over a lump on the floor of the cavern. "Get out of my head!" he snapped.

"Dad what the fuck is going on?" Dean let the map fall to the floor, bringing his flashlight up and his gun along side of it. He turned in a circle trying to see what was bothering his father.

"Why don't you tell him, John? Tell him his mother misses him." Dean shivered as the apparition of his mother that only John could see walked through him. It was the same cold he'd felt when they'd first met Brother Caleb on the side of the road.

"You're not here," John spat getting his wits about him. "I'm not like the other people in this town." He aimed his gun at her ready to shoot.

"Dad, if you shoot that down here, you'll bring the mountain down on top of us."

"I know Dean," He sounded so old and tired in just those three words. "It's something pretending to be your mother. She wants me to kill you, so she won't be alone anymore. Saw her in the Sheriff's office too."

"Good," Dean said with a dismissive snort as he gathered the map back up again. "Means we're close. There was no cave in here dad. You think whatever it is made them all kill each other down here?"

"Makes sense to me." John took a deep breath of the cold dank air of the chamber. "Come on. According to the map, there's another passageway back there." He pointed his flashlight towards the furthest point of the chamber. "They were digging someplace new when it all happened."

* * *

It always amazed Caleb how fast the Bringers could work. The hole they'd dug showed a stone seal on one wall, more runes with tales of the First and the power of the Slayer covered it. "Bring the girl here," he told one of them. He couldn't think of her as Lizzy anymore, from now on, she was just another dirty girl who needed to die. He watched with a smile on his face as they trussed her up to the front of the seal spread eagle.

"For you," he said looking into the stolen eyes of the First as he slowly took the knife, and set about peeling the skin from the screaming girl's body. The first cut went into her arm; a long cut that ran up from wrist to shoulder, deep enough to touch bone now and again. The blood welled in the cut, instead of running down towards the ground; it defied gravity to begin filling the carvings in the seal.

Like a red serpent, the blood twisted and twined through the seal while the murderer finished his work. Lizzy screamed in pain and fear, the whites of her eyes shining in the darkness as he went. Her sobs touched no one as her life was taken from her, the potential power of her soul swallowed by the seal. Caleb stepped back kissing the blood from the blade after slicing the girl's throat open, so the last of her blood did its job. At the edges of the stone seal, cracks began to appear and the sound of stone grating on stone filled the cave.

* * *

The sound of stone grinding against stone made Dean's heart skip a beat. It wasn't a sound you wanted to hear in the bottom of a coal mine that was for damned sure. He stopped as his father touched his arm, drawing him back as the air practically vibrated around them. There was a sound of a hundred screams and a fetid wind blew into their faces driving the Winchesters back against the rough sides of the tunnel they were following. It was different in this section of the mine; no machinery had been used to create this tunnel. It was like walking into the mouth of Hell. 


	10. Chapter 10

Dean spat several times to get the stink of the damned off of his tongue. "God dad, tastes like I just French kissed a basset hound that had been munching in the cat box." The boy rubbed at his face, and swatted imaginary flies away from his ears.

"Shhh," John cautioned holding his hand up. In the distance he could hear voices, and the sounds of tools on stone. "Looks like we're not the only ones down here." As Dean stepped up besides him, they stepped carefully over the debris that was scattered over the floor of the tunnel as it spiraled downwards. "And I don't think they came down the same way we did."

"Think they came through the other side?" Dean tightened the grip on his gun, wondering just when he was going to have to shoot something. The gravel and dust beneath their feet showed no footprints other than their own as Dean flicked his flashlight over the ground.

The older Winchester steeled himself. He had no idea what they were about to face. There had been nothing in his journal and notes from speaking to the other hunters he knew about what was going on here in Double Springs. "You're going to get him killed John," Mary's voice whispered in his ear as annoying as the sound of flies. "It'll be just the same as if you killed him, only you won't have the blood on your hands."

"Get out of my head, bitch." He hissed shaking his head to clear it. Dean touched his arm, and he didn't like the concerned look on the boy's face. "It's nothing. You're nothing." He raised his voice to speak to the entity. "If you're so powerful, why don't you tell us who you really are, and stop fucking around wearing my wife's face?"

"All the dead are my faces to wear John Winchester," the First said as she shifted her face from Mary's, to the Sheriff's, to Lizzy Black's, and back to Mary again. "You should have done your research. But then you're not a Watcher are you, and with only boys you didn't give birth to a Slayer did you? You're just some big dumb hick hunter out to prove to your boy that you've got the biggest set on the planet."

The words Watcher and Slayer did bring up a recollection to a conversation that John had had with Pastor Jim awhile back about a girl who was destined to destroy the demons, and how she was watched over and trained by the Watchers. John had thought it was pretty stupid to think that one little girl, no matter how powerful, would be able to be everywhere that evil was lurking in the world at one time as did most of the other hunters he knew.

"Now darllin'," Caleb drawled as the Winchesters came through the narrow tunnel to the chamber he was in, a narrow cylinder that held an ancient scroll clutched in his blood stained hands. "You're bein' a might harsh on the man. He thinks he's doin' the Lord's work is all."

"Brother Caleb?" Dean's eyes widened at the sight of the man's blood soaked frock and he swallowed as the blue bled out of Caleb's eyes until they were nothing but black. "Demon possessed Brother Caleb."

"I ain't possessed by nothin' Dean." He grinned as he tucked the scroll into a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. "I'm just doin' my lady's work for her. The First moves in mysterious ways, that the likes of y'all would never understand." His black eyes flickered towards the shadows of the rock formations in the chamber where the Bringers were waiting his signal to attack. "I do like you Dean. You're a right fine little killer. Think sooner or later, she'll come callin' on you like she did me. Think you'll be listenin' too."

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Dean snapped bringing his pistol up to point it at the center of Caleb's forehead. "Now quit all the power and glory shit, and tell us what's goin' on here."

"That's not my purpose here Dean," the ex-priest said with a shrug. "I'm here to get the scroll, and do a little extra handy work along the way. Ain't even here to kill either one of you." As he said the words the brown robed and dirt covered shambled out of the darkness, looking like puppets with broken strings. They turned their eyeless faces towards the First's Chosen One and waited. "Course that don't mean my boys won't enjoy rippin' y'all apart." As the last word left his lips, Caleb turned back towards the tunnel to his caves with the scroll held tightly against his body, leaving the Bringers to deal with John and Dean Winchester.

Dean didn't even pause as he fired his gun point blank into the first Bringer's face shattering it into a string stitched pulp with the force of the 9mm shell. His father brought up the shot gun, peppering another three of the First's puppets with buckshot mixed with silver and salt. Neither Winchester had known what they were facing, so they hoped to cover all the basics with the salt and silver. The creatures made no sound with their lips sewn shut, but Dean could hear them growling in anger and pain.

He emptied his clip into the mass of them, finishing off his father's work, while John picked up a discarded shovel, and started bringing it down on anything he could reach. The small chamber was filled with the stink of cordite and blood mingling in with the fetid stench that had filled it to begin with. Neither Dean nor his father took the time to try to read the symbols that were carved into the walls missing the message that would have told them why Caleb and the First had been there at all.

A shower of loose dirt hit Dean on the head, and he stopped fighting long enough to hear the sounds of stone grating on stone. "Dad, time for us to go." The Bringers that were still standing had blocked the way out that they had come through. "Fine by me, you're just minions. Caleb's the one needs to die here."

"You fucking sick son of a bitch," Caleb turned towards his cousin's voice as he entered the outer part of the cave where Lucas was crouched next to his daughter's dismembered body. "She was your cousin! My little girl!" Lucas got up, and aimed his gun at his cousin. "Should have killed you when we was kids, Caleb, when I found you killing Mrs. Beasley's dog like that."

"Probably should've," Caleb agreed holding his hands out and up. "Guess you'll have to arrest me now won't you?" Having his cousin trail him out to the cave hadn't been part of the plan at all, and right now he wished he carried a gun as well as the knife he used for most of his work. "Since I don't think you've got it in you to kill family. If you did, you would have done me in a long time ago."

"Thought you were better Caleb," he said from between teeth that were starting to hurt as he ground them together. Lucas wanted to kill him. Wanted to splatter his brains all over the cave walls and then more, but he couldn't do it. He was a lawman, and he'd be bringing Caleb in to pay for his crimes. "Thought the priesthood had changed you."

"Well it did," Caleb said as he slowly stepped towards his cousin. He could hear the sounds of the cave in behind him, and smiled sure that the annoying Winchester men were now nothing more than greasy smears beneath tons of rock and dirt. "Just not the way my daddy would've liked is all." Lucas didn't lower his gun, and Caleb heard the gunshot before he felt the hot slug rip through his brain. "You shot me?"

"No I didn't." Was the last thing Caleb heard as his body crumpled to the ground at his cousin's feet.

* * *

In the morgue the body sat up tearing through the plastic body bag like a putrid black cocoon. Caleb felt the back of his head; the blood had dried crispy against the bullet wound that had healed over on his scalp. He stretched as the life returned to his arms and legs. The First was waiting for him arms folded across her chest. She had long blonde hair and was wearing a white flowing nightgown. He didn't recognize the face at all. "Shit," he uncommonly swore. "They got the scroll."

"It's not a problem," she said with a smile. "I read it over the Winchester's shoulders in the sheriff's office. I know where it is now. It's in California. Where the Slayer is."

"So they're alive then?" he asked as he pulled on his shoes and started down the hospital corridor to the elevator.

"Who do you think shot you in the back of the head Caleb?" She snorted. "You're right about Dean. He'd have been a good warrior for me if he could have been turned, but that family is marked by another. Someone else will take care of our revenge for us."

* * *

"Thanks for your help. Don't know how to explain what happened to anyone, and not sure I should. But I know you saved my life when you killed Caleb." Dean and John were leaning against the side of the Impala as Sheriff Lucas Black shook their hands. "If you ever come this way again, just look me up."

"Thanks for the food. Sorry about your little girl, sir." Dean hefted the bag of fried chicken and other goodies that Lucas' wife had made them for the next leg of their journey. The smell was making his mouth water. His dad had that look on his face that said they were going to be hitting a library to do some research soon, so the food would be a good thing to while away the hours.


End file.
